Evaluation: Question Four

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Initially, my planned target audience was the so-called "raver" crowd. Mostly composed of young, middle class people, my profiling was based around the party culture of places like Ibiza, which are infamous for their wild holidaymakers, copious amounts of alcohol and drugs, and music that one could only dance to if one had recently consumed said alcohol and drugs. These people, I assumed, would be fairly undemanding music-wise, mostly listening to it as a kind of "audio-wallpaper". Besides, I thought many of them would be too stoned out of their minds to care anyway. I would therefore design a magazine that drew this audience in with flashy colours and bold font, before giving them basic information about upcoming events and acts. In short, a low-brow magazine for a low-brow audience.

However, several things made me change this view of my audience. Firstly, I realised that the ravers I would be selling to might find out about the events via other methods, and they might not read much; this made seeling to them look like a bad idea. Secondly, I found that the supposedly simple rave music I had chosen to base my magazine on was far more complex than I had expected, and that there might be more "hardcore" fans of it than the typical raver. Thirdly, I had already started making the magazine, and my natural leaning towards intellectual discussion meant it was too high brow for my original audience. So, I changed the focus of my magazine away from rave music to the more encompassing electronic music and marketed it towards the serious fans instead. These fans take a great deal more interest in the music side of the rave scene; they might well play an instrument (most likely a synthesizer) or show an interest in being a DJ. They would need to be techno-savvy in order to operate these musical instruments. Most likely they would drink and take drugs like my first audeince, but never to excess. In short, they are the serious fans of electronic music, and they expect a serious magazine, which is what I was making.

Evaluation: Question Three

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

For the publishing of my music magazine, I believe the best choice for developing it would be Development Hell, Ltd. They are a medium-sized independant publisher, publishing two monthly magazines: Mixmag, a magazine centred around DJs, and The Word, which does not focus on any genre of music.

I have chosen this company because of several reasons. First, they are an independant publisher and therefore likely to publish my magazine, which is quike far-wing and unlikely to be accepted by established publishers. Secondly, I beleive my magazine would mesh well with the two other magazines Development Hell publishes. Mixmag is centred around DJing. DJs generally make electronic music, thus Mixmag and my magazine, which focuses on electronic music, would accompany each other well.

Music Magazine main article plan

Music Magazine contents plan

Magazine Layout Plan

Font choice experiments

1. Too neat and futuristic.
2. Too plain and thin.
3. The visual effect this text has would be suitable, but it might make it hard to read
4. Good. Bold and easily recognisable, but still suits my theme.
5. Very cool visual effect; perfectly matches my theme whilst still being reasonably easy to read.
6. Similiar to 3, but is probably easier to read.
7. Easy to read, but not heavy enough to be noticeable.
8. Stands out well, but is not easy to read.
9. Too similiar to Kerrang magazine too avoid lawsuit.
10. Good, matches theme well, but the font may be dificult to read.

Final choices for magazine: 5, 6 and 10.

Analysis of Target Audience

For my magazine, I intend to aim for a relatively mass-market, non niche audience. Because the genre my magazine focuses on is dance/rave style music normally played at parties, my audience will be mostly outgoing, sociable people. They should range from students up to middle age, but will mostly be male. They will likely have a relatively unsophisticated diet, and are not above eating fast food. They do like their alcohol though, beers and lagers particularly. In terms of media consumption their tastes are equally lowbrow, preferring mindless action and disaster movies. They watch lots of TV, generally avoiding documentaries in favour of reality TV shows. In general, my audience is often bored by intellectual media, and so the mindless beats of dance/rave is a good choice for a magazine for them.